Riot Act

magazine out of the Glock and placed them down together on the table top, then sat back, leaving them between us.

Sean’s shoulders dropped a fraction. He’d played it so cool I hadn’t recognised the tension in him. He linked his fingers together and sat with his chin propped on them, just looking at me. I kept my face expressionless.

“Colonel Parris was a fool to let you go,” he said at last. “You were perfect for Special Forces.”

I said nothing, managing to convey polite enquiry in the lift of an eyebrow.

“If anyone else had been pointing that at me,” he went on, gesturing to the Glock, “I might not have taken it so seriously, but you were one of the best shots with a pistol I’ve ever come across, Charlie. Cool-headed. Deadly.”

“There were plenty who were just as good.” I shrugged off the compliment, feeling gauche.

He shook his head. “A lot of people had a reasonable ability to aim,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they’d got the stomach to pull the trigger for real. Not like you, Charlie, you had what it took. Still do, at a guess.”

“Thanks,” I said, tartly. “I’m not sure it’s very flattering to be told you’ve got all the makings of a cold- blooded killer.”

“Not quite. A sniper, more like. A soldier. With the nerve to kill when necessary, that’s true, but under the right circumstances. For the right cause.”

If only you knew, I thought, and the pain of it seared like fire. “Like a terrorist?” I shot back. “Or an assassin?”

He sighed and made no reply, reaching for the Glock and snapping it back together with practised ease.

“I suppose you do know that carrying one of those things is illegal these days?” I pointed out mildly, watching the unconscious skill in his deft movements.

“In my line of work, they’re often a useful, if not essential bit of kit,” he said, cheerfully unrepentant. “Besides, I have contacts with the security services, and they allow me some leeway.”

“And what is your line of work, Sean?” I said, feeling a sudden chill seep through my bones.

He smiled unexpectedly, transforming his severe facial structure. “I don’t kill people, if that’s what you’re afraid of. Not even a damned Paki who gets my sister pregnant,” he said, mocking me gently as he tucked the gun away out of sight. “In fact, if I’d known Nas was in danger I probably could have helped him. I’m in close protection now, Charlie. After I left the army, I became a bodyguard.”

That one threw me and I didn’t trouble to hide the fact. “Do your family know what you do?” I asked.

He paused, frowning as he considered the question. “No, they don’t,” he said eventually. “They know I work in security, but I’ve always tried to make it sound boring – like it involves sending night-watchmen round building sites. They don’t know I do personal stuff. No-one round here does. Only you.”

I filed away the possible significance of that for reflection at a later date. Standing, I said, “If we’re not going out for that drink, would you like some coffee?”

Sean smiled again. “OK.”

He followed me as I moved through to the kitchen and dug out the ingredients. I hadn’t stocked up for a while, but fortunately I had a pack of long-life milk in the bottom of a cupboard. Sean leaned in the doorway and watched me spoon instant coffee granules into two mugs.

“It’s come to something when you feel you can’t get the truth out of me without a gun to my head,” he said quietly.

I glanced up at him as I flicked on the kettle, kept my voice dispassionate. “Old wounds take a long time to heal.”

“Yeah, well.” He raked a hand through his hair, looking tired again. “Maybe you should have thought of that before you went shooting from the lip and told everyone about us—”

“Hang on, before I told anyone?” I spun round, slamming the milk down hard enough to slop some of the contents over the side of the carton. “I didn’t say a word. I thought it was you.”

“Me?” He looked genuinely astonished. I saw the anger building in the bunching of his shoulders. “OK, let’s backtrack for a moment here, shall we?” he said tightly. “When I took up that last posting everything was fine, yeah? I was out of touch for what, three weeks? Then I try to contact you and I’m told you’re on leave. Permanently on leave. It went on for months. I even rang your damned parents, not that I expected them to be helpful. And what was I told? Charlotte doesn’t want to speak to you again. Ever.” The bitterness welled up in his words, overflowed. “What the hell was I supposed to think?”

I wanted to stop him going on. To tell him he’d been wrong. To reach out to him, but I couldn’t seem to move. He threw me a single, dark unfathomable look, then went on.

“So, next thing I know I’m being hauled into the local company commander’s office and told I’m up on a charge for screwing one of my trainees. They told me you had failed the course, but when they’d RTU’d you, you’d started screaming about slapping them with a suit for sexual harassment against me, if not actual rape. I was told there’d been a court martial, and you were out, but not before you’d brought me down with you.”

“I didn’t,” I whispered, stricken. “Sean, I swear that’s not how it happened.”

“So, what did?” he threw back.

I swallowed, unwilling to tell him what had really gone on that dark, and miserable night. I opted for half- truth instead, and hoped that would be enough. “I-I was attacked,” I said at last, “the week after you left. A group of them jumped me and I was pretty badly beat up. That’s why I was on leave.”

That much at least was true. The secret of a believable lie was to stick as closely as possible to reality. There was less opportunity to stumble.

Donalson, Hackett, Morton, and Clay. The names went round and round again. I shut them out.

“There was a court martial,” I went on, “but it went against me. They said I’d provoked them, made it out to be my fault. I tried to get hold of you, to speak up for me as one of my instructors, nothing more than that, but you never returned any of my calls. So,” I shrugged my shoulders, “I was out.”

“I never got any messages. They kept me moving around a lot, out of regular contact. I never knew you’d called me.” He shook his head, then looked up at me intensely. “And you let it rest there?” he demanded. “After what they did to you?”

For a moment my breath stopped, fearing he’d tumbled to it. Then I saw his eyes shift to my throat, understanding dawning, laced with compassion. I knew I should have told him he was jumping to the wrong conclusions about that, but I was too much of a coward.

“No, I didn’t. I wish I had.” The kettle boiled and clicked off, giving me the chance to turn away, fuss with pouring boiling water into the mugs, stirring them. “I went for a civil action against them. That was when it all came out about us. I don’t know who told them, but it certainly wasn’t me.”

“You never told anyone?” he demanded. “What about those two other girls on the course? What were their names? Woolley and Lewis. You all seemed to get on OK. You’re sure you never had any heart-to-heart girlie chats with them?”

I shook my head, not insulted by the question. “We were never that close, so yes, I’m sure,” I said.

In fact, Woolley, Lewis and I had never really liked each other. We knew we were in the minority, as women training for the job we hoped to do, and that we had to stick together. But, at the same time the three of us were in direct competition with each other. I knew without undue conceit that I’d been a better soldier. They knew it too, and they hadn’t liked me for it.

Woolley in particular had been struggling to keep up. She was supposed to speak up in my favour at the trial, but her carefully neutral testimony about my general behaviour had a damning effect. Afterwards, she’d left the courtroom without talking to me, unable even to meet my eyes.

I learned later that although Lewis failed to complete the course, Woolley passed it and went on to active service. In my more bitter moments I wondered if that was her reward for sinking me.

“However it came out about us,” I said, “I lost the case because of it. I went from model soldier to—” I broke off, aware of how close I’d come to letting too much slip. “Well, I’m sure you can guess.”

“That’s why you disappeared, changed your name?”

I nodded. In the army I’d been Foxcroft. In an effort to escape the hounding of the press afterwards, I’d shortened it to Fox. It had seemed like a good way to disappear, and it had worked.